Archives For Verizon v. FCC

In the opening seconds of what was surely one of the worst oral arguments in a high-profile case that I have ever heard, Pantelis Michalopoulos, arguing for petitioners against the FCC’s 2018 Restoring Internet Freedom Order (RIFO) expertly captured both why the side he was representing should lose and the overall absurdity of the entire net neutrality debate: “This order is a stab in the heart of the Communications Act. It would literally write ‘telecommunications’ out of the law. It would end the communications agency’s oversight over the main communications service of our time.”

The main communications service of our time is the Internet. The Communications and Telecommunications Acts were written before the advent of the modern Internet, for an era when the telephone was the main communications service of our time. The reality is that technological evolution has written “telecommunications” out of these Acts – the “telecommunications services” they were written to regulate are no longer the important communications services of the day.

The basic question of the net neutrality debate is whether we expect Congress to weigh in on how regulators should respond when an industry undergoes fundamental change, or whether we should instead allow those regulators to redefine the scope of their own authority. In the RIFO case, petitioners (and, more generally, net neutrality proponents) argue that agencies should get to define their own authority. Those on the other side of the issue (including me) argue that that it is up to Congress to provide agencies with guidance in response to changing circumstances – and worry that allowing independent and executive branch agencies broad authority to act without Congressional direction is a recipe for unfettered, unchecked, and fundamentally abusive concentrations of power in the hands of the executive branch.

These arguments were central to the DC Circuit’s evaluation of the prior FCC net neutrality order – the Open Internet Order. But rather than consider the core issue of the case, the four hours of oral arguments this past Friday were instead a relitigation of long-ago addressed ephemeral distinctions, padded out with irrelevance and esoterica, and argued with a passion available only to those who believe in faerie tales and monsters under their bed. Perhaps some revelled in hearing counsel for both sides clumsily fumble through strained explanations of the difference between standalone telecommunications services and information services that are by definition integrated with them, or awkward discussions about how ISPs may implement hypothetical prioritization technologies that have not even been developed. These well worn arguments successfully demonstrated, once again, how many angels can dance upon the head of a single pin – only never before have so many angels been so irrelevant.

This time around, petitioners challenging the order were able to scare up some intervenors to make novel arguments on their behalf. Most notably, they were able to scare up a group of public safety officials to argue that the FCC had failed to consider arguments that the RIFO would jeopardize public safety services that rely on communications networks. I keep using the word “scare” because these arguments are based upon incoherent fears peddled by net neutrality advocates in order to find unsophisticated parties to sign on to their policy adventures. The public safety fears are about as legitimate as concerns that the Easter Bunny might one day win the Preakness – and merited as much response from the FCC as a petition from the Racehorse Association of America demanding the FCC regulate rabbits.

In the end, I have no idea how the DC Circuit is going to come down in this case. Public Safety concerns – like declarations of national emergencies – are often given undue and unwise weight. And there is a legitimately puzzling, if fundamentally academic, argument about a provision of the Communications Act (47 USC 257(c)) that Congress repealed after the Order was adopted and that was an noteworthy part of the notice the FCC gave when the Order was proposed that could lead the Court to remand the Order back to the Commission.

In the end, however, this case is unlikely to address the fundamental question of whether the FCC has any business regulating Internet access services. If the FCC loses, we’ll be back here in another year or two; if the FCC wins, we’ll be back here the next time a Democrat is in the White House. And the real tragedy is that every minute the FCC spends on the interminable net neutrality non-debate is a minute not spent on issues like closing the rural digital divide or promoting competitive entry into markets by next generation services.

So much wasted time. So many billable hours. So many angels dancing on the head of a pin. If only they were the better angels of our nature.

Postscript: If I sound angry about the endless fights over net neutrality, it’s because I am. I live in one of the highest-cost, lowest-connectivity states in the country. A state where much of the territory is covered by small rural carriers for whom the cost of just following these debates can mean delaying the replacement of an old switch, upgrading a circuit to fiber, or wiring a street. A state in which if prioritization were to be deployed it would be so that emergency services would be able to work over older infrastructure or so that someone in a rural community could remotely attend classes at the University or consult with a primary care physician (because forget high speed Internet – we have counties without doctors in them). A state in which if paid prioritization were to be developed it would be to help raise capital to build out service to communities that have never had high-speed Internet access.

So yes: the fact that we might be in for another year of rule making followed by more litigation because some firefighters signed up for the wrong wireless service plan and then were duped into believing a technological, economic, and political absurdity about net neutrality ensuring they get free Internet access does make me angry. Worse, unlike the hypothetical harms net neutrality advocates are worried about, the endless discussion of net neutrality causes real, actual, concrete harm to the people net neutrality advocates like to pat themselves on the back as advocating for. We should all be angry about this, and demanding that Congress put this debate out of our misery.

No one’s against an open Internet. The notion that anyone can put up a virtual shingle—and that the good ideas will rise to the top—is a bedrock principle with broad support; it has made the Internet essential to modern life. Key to Internet openness is the freedom to innovate. An open Internet and the idea that companies can make special deals for faster access are not mutually exclusive. If the Internet really is “open,” shouldn’t all companies be free to experiment with new technologies, business models and partnerships? Shouldn’t the FCC allow companies to experiment in building the unknown—and unknowable—Internet of the future?

The best approach would be to maintain the “Hands off the Net” approach that has otherwise prevailed for 20 years. That means a general presumption that innovative business models and other forms of “prioritization” are legal. Innovation could thrive, and regulators could still keep a watchful eye, intervening only where there is clear evidence of actual harm, not just abstract fears. And they should start with existing legal tools—like antitrust and consumer protection laws—before imposing prior restraints on innovation.

But net neutrality regulation hurts more than it helps. Counterintuitively, a blanket rule that ISPs treat data equally could actually harm consumers. Consider the innovative business models ISPs are introducing. T-Mobile’s unRadio lets users listen to all the on-demand music and radio they want without taking a hit against their monthly data plan. Yet so-called consumer advocates insist that’s a bad thing because it favors some content providers over others. In fact, “prioritizing” one service when there is congestion frees up data for subscribers to consume even more content—from whatever source. You know regulation may be out of control when a company is demonized for offering its users a freebie.

[P]rohibiting tiered or usage-based pricing and requiring all subscribers to pay the same amount for broadband service, regardless of the performance or usage of the service, would force lighter end users of the network to subsidize heavier end users. It would also foreclose practices that may appropriately align incentives to encourage efficient use of networks.

The rules that net neutrality advocates want would hurt startups as well as consumers. Imagine a new entrant, clamoring for market share. Without the budget for a major advertising blitz, the archetypical “next Netflix” might never get the exposure it needs to thrive. But for a relatively small fee, the startup could sign up to participate in a sponsored data program, with its content featured and its customers’ data usage exempted from their data plans. This common business strategy could mean the difference between success and failure for a startup. Yet it would be prohibited by net neutrality rules banning paid prioritization.

The FCC lacks sound legal authority. The FCC is essentially proposing to do what can only properly be done by Congress: invent a new legal regime for broadband. Each of the options the FCC proposes to justify this—Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act and common carrier classification—is deeply problematic.

First, Section 706 isn’t sustainable. Until 2010, the FCC understood Section 706 as a directive to use its other grants of authority to promote broadband deployment. But in its zeal to regulate net neutrality, the FCC reversed itself in 2010, claiming Section 706 as an independent grant of authority. This would allow the FCC to regulate any form of “communications” in any way not directly barred by the Act — not just broadband but “edge” companies like Google and Facebook. This might mean going beyond neutrality to regulate copyright, cybersecurity and more. The FCC need only assert that regulation would somehow promote broadband.

If Section 706 is a grant of authority, it’s almost certainly a power to deregulate. But even if its power is as broad as the FCC claims, the FCC still hasn’t made the case that, on balance, its proposed regulations would actually do what it asserts: promote broadband. The FCC has stubbornly refused to conduct serious economic analysis on the net effects of its neutrality rules.

And Title II would be a disaster. The FCC has asked whether Title II of the Act, which governs “common carriers” like the old monopoly telephone system, is a workable option. It isn’t.

In the first place, regulations that impose design limitations meant for single-function networks simply aren’t appropriate for the constantly evolving Internet. Moreover, if the FCC re-interprets the Communications Act to classify broadband ISPs as common carriers, it risks catching other Internet services in the cross-fire, inadvertently making them common carriers, too. Surely net neutrality proponents can appreciate the harmful effects of treating Skype as a common carrier.

Forbearance can’t clean up the Title II mess. In theory the FCC could “forbear” from Title II’s most onerous rules, promising not to apply them when it determines there’s enough competition in a market to make the rules unnecessary. But the agency has set a high bar for justifying forbearance.

Most recently, in 2012, the Commission refused to grant Qwest forbearance even in the highly competitive telephony market, disregarding competition from wireless providers, and concluding that a cable-telco “duopoly” is inadequate to protect consumers. It’s unclear how the FCC could justify reaching the opposite conclusion about the broadband market—simultaneously finding it competitive enough to forbear, yet fragile enough to require net neutrality rules. Such contradictions would be difficult to explain, even if the FCC generally gets discretion on changing its approach.

But there is another path forward. If the FCC can really make the case for regulation, it should go to Congress, armed with the kind of independent economic and technical expert studies Commissioner Pai has urged, and ask for new authority. A new Communications Act is long overdue anyway. In the meantime, the FCC could convene the kind of multistakeholder process generally endorsed by the White House to produce a code enforceable by the Federal Trade Commission. A consensus is possible — just not inside the FCC, where the policy questions can’t be separated from the intractable legal questions.

Meanwhile, the FCC should focus on doing what Section 706 actually demands: clearing barriers to broadband deployment and competition. The 2010 National Broadband Plan laid out an ambitious pro-deployment agenda. It’s just too bad the FCC was so obsessed with net neutrality that it didn’t focus on the plan. Unleashing more investment and competition, not writing more regulation, is the best way to keep the Internet open, innovative and free.

Today the D.C. Circuit struck down most of the FCC’s 2010 Open Internet Order, rejecting rules that required broadband providers to carry all traffic for edge providers (“anti-blocking”) and prevented providers from negotiating deals for prioritized carriage. However, the appeals court did conclude that the FCC has statutory authority to issue “Net Neutrality” rules under Section 706(a) and let stand the FCC’s requirement that broadband providers clearly disclose their network management practices.

The following statement may be attributed to Geoffrey Manne and Berin Szoka:

The FCC may have lost today’s battle, but it just won the war over regulating the Internet. By recognizing Section 706 as an independent grant of statutory authority, the court has given the FCC near limitless power to regulate not just broadband, but the Internet itself, as Judge Silberman recognized in his dissent.

The court left the door open for the FCC to write new Net Neutrality rules, provided the Commission doesn’t treat broadband providers as common carriers. This means that, even without reclassifying broadband as a Title II service, the FCC could require that any deals between broadband and content providers be reasonable and non-discriminatory, just as it has required wireless carriers to provide data roaming services to their competitors’ customers on that basis. In principle, this might be a sound approach, if the rule resembles antitrust standards. But even that limitation could easily be evaded if the FCC regulates through case-by-case enforcement actions, as it tried to do before issuing the Open Internet Order. Either way, the FCC need only make a colorable argument under Section 706 that its actions are designed to “encourage the deployment… of advanced telecommunications services.” If the FCC’s tenuous “triple cushion shot” argument could satisfy that test, there is little limit to the deference the FCC will receive.

But that’s just for Net Neutrality. Section 706 covers “advanced telecommunications,” which seems to include any information service, from broadband to the interconnectivity of smart appliances like washing machines and home thermostats. If the court’s ruling on Section 706 is really as broad as it sounds, and as the dissent fears, the FCC just acquired wide authority over these, as well — in short, the entire Internet, including the “Internet of Things.” While the court’s “no common carrier rules” limitation is a real one, the FCC clearly just gained enormous power that it didn’t have before today’s ruling.

Today’s decision essentially rewrites the Communications Act in a way that will, ironically, do the opposite of what the FCC claims: hurt, not help, deployment of new Internet services. Whatever the FCC’s role ought to be, such decisions should be up to our elected representatives, not three unelected FCC Commissioners. So if there’s a silver lining in any of this, it may be that the true implications of today’s decision are so radical that Congress finally writes a new Communications Act — a long-overdue process Congressmen Fred Upton and Greg Walden have recently begun.

Thank you to @senorrinhatch for recognizing that "uncertain patent rights will lead to less innovation because drug companies will not spend the billions of dollars it typically costs to bring a new drug to market..." https://truthonthemarket.co